Silicon Valley Season 1 Review “Signaling Risk”

This week’s Silicon Valley finally gave us something a little different in terms of plot. Though “Signaling Risk” still focused on how woefully unprepared the Pied Piper team is, we finally saw the rest of the team pushed to step up their game a bit.

There were two big focuses this week, with the first being Ehrlich’s attempts to develop a logo for Pied Piper. His interactions with Chuy weren’t the funniest, though I got a few good laughs out of his confused attempts to not be racist. I was a bit disappointed that the logo they ultimately ended up with wasn’t able to combine some of Chuy’s flair with the fairly standard lowercase look, but this was still a solid arc.

Much more interesting was the command coming down from Peter Gregory that Pied Piper would need to be ready for the tech jam Richard forgot to withdraw from. Richard’s been doing his best to step up his game recently, but the pressure continues to pile onto him. At the very least, he’s doing a better job of standing up for himself, as he blamed Monica for talking him into going into business with someone who only cared about pissing off Gavin Belson. It was nice to see Monica get involved a bit more here, as she’s done little but act as Gregory’s lackey since the show started.

Big Head continues to be one of my favorite characters, as his understated reactions to the vapid corporate atmosphere at Hooli keep bringing the laughs. The scene with Gavin Belson’s hologram could’ve been significantly shorter from a storytelling standpoint, but the writers managed to keep the laughs coming as technologies continued to fail. Even his simple eyebrow raise at Hooli’s new mural at the end of the episode got a chuckle out of me.

Lastly, there was Dinesh and Gilfoyle, who continued to snipe at one another, even when they were in agreement. I loved that even though Jared’s attempt to have them compete was painfully obvious, the two couldn’t help but get caught up due to the intensity of their rivalry. Really, though, the two need some kind of fire under them.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know in the comments!

About The Author

Jordan is a freelance writer, editor and podcaster with a love for all different types of pop culture. When it comes to television, his favorites include creative sitcoms like Community and big sci-fi epics like Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5. Ever since Netflix instant streaming became available, there’s always been some show playing in the background as he keeps up with the latest news and reviews from around the web.